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We Were the World

I was rehabilitated. Now I channel my writing into professional pursuits that actually give me money.

Then … Trump got elected. And now I feel the itch of the keyboard calling me like a crack pipe. I’m not really gonna start blogging again, am I? Seriously? Aren’t you 40?

Let me explain.

FLASHBACK 2015

Donald Trump is an existential threat to our democracy. Thankfully, no sane person would ever willingly cast a ballot for him, so I didn’t have to travel down that logical road to find the dark conclusion of what his election might mean. No chance in Hell so long as the Democrats don’t hump a vacuum cleaner.

Time to go back to Minecraft, the world is fine.

November 8th, 2016

Well, shit.

For Democrats, liberals, progressives, minorities, women, and 99% of people outside of the USA, it feels like the American people are gleefully reenacting the Russian roulette scene from the Deerhunter.

I’ve been in a hybrid state of melancholia, depression, and outrage since. To me, Trump is such an obvious conman, I can’t fathom how some people are willingly and eagerly sucking his bullshit up with a straw. I’m incredulous.

It has shaken my view on humanity. What the hell happened?

From Then to Now

I was born in 1976 and grew up in the 1980s. The Cold War was nearly over with the death throes of the Soviet Union. It was a time of optimism for the world, a finger wag against corporate greed and excess (see Wall Street). A transformative moment in our collective childhood was when We Are the World was released. Here were Americans reaching out to the world, not only as ambassadors for peace and freedom, but sharing our prosperity.

We saw the Berlin Wall come down. We saw the Iron Curtain crumble. Good overcoming evil.

I saw time as the inexorable march towards progress, modernity, equality, and democracy. This is perhaps the naivete of a white male growing up in Pax Americana.

Trump and the autocratic movement that has been slowing eroding democratic foundations throughout the world has shaken my faith in people (Hungary, Venezuela, Brazil, Poland, Greece, the Philippines, etc). Are we doomed like lemmings to forget all of the hard-earned lessons of the past and tumble off the cliff in our excess-induced myopia?

Fuck.

Yes, I went full F-bomb in my first post back. Fuck indeed.

The return to blogging (aka talking to myself) was born out of the need to comment on social media. Seeing post after post of other outraged people or people buying into to this charade of governance. That’s as good of a mission statement for this re-purposed blog as I’m going to offer.